


The Shadow of Your Heart

by MacPherson



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Cancer, First Meeting, M/M, Mentions of Character Death, Mentions of surgery, as in several Amis have died before this fic takes place, mentions of hospitalization, mentions of needles, mentions of past unrequited Enjolras/Combeferre, sort of, the fault in our stars au, yes the metaphor is in here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-07
Updated: 2014-06-07
Packaged: 2018-02-03 17:10:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1752380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MacPherson/pseuds/MacPherson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On Thursday afternoons, Grantaire goes to Support Group, because apparently forcing seriously ill teenagers to socialize is supposed to help them cope with their diagnoses. </p>
<p>Grantaire thinks this is utter bullshit.</p>
<p>In honor of Barricade Day and the release of the movie, a The Fault in Our Stars AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Shadow of Your Heart

**Author's Note:**

> Please check the tags--I don't want anyone to read anything they're unprepared for or don't want to!

If you asked Rene Grantaire to describe himself, he would say he’s average.

The only thing he’s good at is being average. Seriously. If it weren’t a contradiction for the proverbial them to give out awards for being average, he would win one. That’s how average he is.

He can’t even do normal teenaged things like hate his parents for making him attend the social cesspit that is his local public high school. 

That’s because his parents pulled him out of school two years ago, when the cancer metastasized and he almost died. Things have evened out since then—he no longer wakes up in the morning wondering “is today the day I’ll kick the bucket?”—but everyone keeps telling him it’s better if he doesn’t go back to school. Too much stress. All those germs. His immune system is compromised, you know.

So his time these days is filled with trips to see his vast array of doctors, reassuring his parents that he’s feeling fine, thanks, no you really don’t need to do that, and watching YouTube videos of cats discovering that yes, Newton’s laws of motion do in fact apply to them.

On Thursday afternoons, Grantaire goes to Support Group, because apparently forcing seriously ill teenagers to socialize with one another is supposed to help them cope with their diagnoses.

Grantaire thinks this is utter bullshit.

He goes, though. To make his mom happy. To get out of the house for a while. And because these kids are the closest thing he has to friends, now that he’s been out of school for so long.

The faces are different every week. At this point, after a year and a half of semi-regular attendance, Grantaire is one of the veterans of the group. He’s stuck in a weird limbo—not healthy enough to rejoin the outside world, but not sick enough to be fully in Cancer World either.

Of the kids that Grantaire had really gotten to know, Bossuet was the first to go. It wasn’t even the lymphoma that got him—it was an infection, picked up from something that hadn’t been sanitized correctly, or by being sneezed on by the wrong person, or something. Joly hasn’t been the same since. Those two did everything together, and Joly has been on a very hygienic autopilot since Bossuet died. Almost like he lost a piece of himself, too.

Because people die. And if you love them, you’re left to pick up the pieces they leave behind. And if you die first, you leave an emotional shitshow behind. It’s safer to just glide through. That’s why Grantaire doesn’t let himself get too attached to anything or anyone.

* * *

It’s only fourteen steps down into the church basement where Support Group meets, but Grantaire is out of breath as he drops into a butt-achingly hard plastic chair. 

There’s someone new this week, sitting next to Courfeyrac.

Grantaire’s lungs decided two years ago that they didn’t like being lungs and wanted to be water balloons instead. It’s fairly annoying to have to rely on a machine to keep him breathing properly, but he can pretty much deal with it.

Except for when his plans to have a quiet afternoon affirming other peoples’ intentions to be _strong_ and to live as full a life as they can, no matter the limitations, are shattered by living, breathing Greek statuary sitting next to Courfeyrac—who is friends with everyone—laughing at something he must have just said.

And, fuck, it’s really hard to breathe when Apollo notices you there, and the twinkle in his eye and his wide grin, left over from whatever Courf said, are aimed at you. And he’s still bright and smiling but now he looks a little serious, like he’s in the middle of learning something really important and has to concentrate really hard to make sure he understands it.

And that expression is aimed at _Grantaire_ , and he curses every god he can think of.

_No, Grantaire, do not let yourself develop a stupid hopeless crush on the pretty boy at Support Group. This is all kinds of stupid._

He spends the next few minutes, as other sick kids trickle in and find seats in the circle of chairs, staring at the borders between the tiles in the linoleum floor, fiddling with his oxygen tank, looking anywhere but across the circle at Apollo incarnate.

Support Group is led by some guy whose name Grantaire can’t—or maybe doesn’t want to—remember, and tries way too hard to be cool.

They begin with the serenity prayer.

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,” the teenagers chant, monotone and blasé, “the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

Because he doesn’t have much intellectual stimulation these days, Grantaire spends a lot of time thinking about the irony of using the same prayer in Alcoholics Anonymous and a support group for teenagers with cancer.

The same prayer that is used to help alcoholics get through the day without drinking is used to help cancerous teenagers accept that what are supposed to be the happiest, most happy-go-lucky years of their lives are going to be their last and there isn’t a goddammed thing they can do about it.

They go around the circle, and recite names, diagnoses, how they’re doing today.

“I’m Courfeyrac. I’ve got a tumor in my brain, and I’m going in for more surgery next week. It’s been a rough few days, but I’m feeling optimistic. And it helps a lot to have friends like Enjolras.”

“Thank you for sharing that, Courfeyrac. We’re here for you. And welcome, Enjolras. Could you tell us a bit about yourself?”

“Uh, yeah. Sure.” He clears his throat. “Hi, everyone. My name’s Auguste Enjolras.”

He launches into a long description of what he’s been diagnosed with and exactly where needles have been stuck into him to try to treat it, but Grantaire isn’t really paying attention. Enjolras is leaning forward, elbows resting on his knees, hands waving around nonsensically. It shouldn’t be, but it’s almost hypnotic.

“I was really bitter when I was first diagnosed, you know? Like, I’m supposed to live to be eighty, at least, and now you’re telling me I might not make it to twenty-five? What kind of bullshit is that? We went to the moon, we have robots on Mars, we’re growing organs in Petri dishes from stem cells, and you’re honestly telling me we haven’t found a better way to treat cancer yet? And then I realized that just being mad at the world wasn’t going to change anything, it was only affecting me and the people close to me. So I decided to do something positive with that anger. I ran the marathon last year, and I raised over $10,000 for free screenings at the clinic downtown. I’m trying to fit as much living and as much positive change as I could do in eighty years into however long I have.”

Oh, fuck, he’s one of _those_.

One of the ones who has _become_ his cancer, made it his mission in life to vanquish it.

Grantaire can’t stand those people.

The meeting goes on like it always does. Fairly monotonous, really. They talk about school, about teachers who think that cancer means “special snowflake child who is a china doll and must be handled with utmost care,” about friends who say they’ll call, say they’ll go to the movies with you and never do. About people who stare at bald heads, at tubes in noses and throats. About how being a teenager is hard enough without having to be _brave_ and _strong_ and be _such a fighter_.

At the end, there’s another prayer. Grantaire bows his head because it’s what everyone else does. He can’t give in to peer pressure at school because he doesn’t go to school, so he might as well get this teenage rite of passage at Support Group instead.

The leader reads a list of names, of the people who used to come to Support Group but don’t any more, because they’re dead. When Grantaire first started coming, the list was short enough to be recited from memory, and all the names were unfamiliar to him. But now the list is long enough that the leader has an index card he updates every week, and Grantaire knows the face for almost every name.

“We remember Bossuet, Maureen, David…“

Grantaire isn’t sure why, but he looks over at Enjolras.

“…Combeferre…”

The tendons in Enjolras’ neck pop out. He bites his lip, staring determinedly at one spot on the floor.

The leader moves down the list.

* * *

After the meeting, it takes Grantaire a frustratingly long time to get back up those fourteen stairs, and out to the curb to wait for his mom. But he’s such a fighter and he never gives up. 

If it hadn’t been for how unreliable his respiratory system is, he would gag whenever he heard those words used to refer to someone with cancer.

He squints at the church driveway. The sun is really flipping bright today, even where he’s standing in the shade.

“You come here a lot?”

Oh, fuck. There’s Auguste. Enjolras. Whatever.

“Only when I’m feeling particularly cancerous. Or my mom actually drags me out of bed by my ankles. Well, she hasn’t done that since the whole lung thing.” He gestures to his cannula, the breathing tube wrapped around his face.

“I haven’t seen you here before. I mean, this is only like my third time here. I usually go to one that meets at the hospital. But Courf comes here, and he’s having a rough time lately, so I figured I’d join him. And it definitely paid off.”

“You say that like there’s some benefit to these circle jerks of sympathy.”

“There is! There’s power in solidarity, in knowing you’re not alone.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Studies have shown that—“

“Oh my God, stop.”

Enjolras makes a frustrated choking sound but crosses his arms over his chest and then stares at Grantaire in petulant silence.

“Who’s Combeferre?”

Grantaire knows it’s a mistake to ask as soon as the words are out of his mouth—truth be told, he knew it was a mistake before he even said anything.

Enjolras kicks a pebble and resolutely refuses to look Grantaire in the eye. “I don’t want to talk about Combeferre,” he mutters.

“Do you really believe all that stuff?” Grantaire asks after a moment.

“Of course I do!” Enjolras’ answer shoots out before Grantaire has even finished asking the question.

“Even when all this awful shit is happening? When you watch people close to you become empty shells of themselves? Hell, knowing there’s a decent chance it’ll happen to you? How the hell do you believe that the world is inherently good and fair in the face of all that?”

“Because I can make it better. Even if you don’t live as long as you want to, or as long as you should, don’t you at least want to try to make the most of it? Don’t you want to leave a mark on the world?"

Grantaire scoffs. “You mean enjoy it while I can? And do what, skip along the beach at sunset, twirling in the sand like I’m a girl in a tampon commercial, and rhapsodize about how _alive_ I feel? Yeah, it feels good in the moment, but it doesn’t last. You come home and your room smells like cleaning products because your mom bleached everything while you were out because your immune system is shit and if you get a cold you’ll die. Yeah, I’d love to enjoy that while I can. Face it, pretty boy, we’re all going to die—sooner than we should—and there is nothing poetic or meaningful about that. It’s just death.”

Pausing to catch his breath, Grantaire expects Enjolras to hit back immediately, to tell him that he’s wrong, that there’s always something meaningful in life, no matter how awful.

But Enjolras just stands there, a half-formed smile on his face.

“What is wrong with you?” Grantaire can’t make heads nor tails of this guy.

“Pardon?”

“I just spent pretty much all of the energy I had ranting that life is meaningless and death is everywhere, and you’re not going to say anything?”

“You called me ‘pretty boy.’”

“I— _what_? That’s what you’re stuck on? Wow. Get over yourself.”

“I like to enjoy life. Cherish those little moments of joy that are often all too fleeting. You just called me pretty and I’m going to revel in it for a moment.”

If it weren’t for the tubes in his nose, Grantaire would snort his disdain for the pretentious chatter pouring forth from this guy.

He tries anyway, and chokes. It takes a few shallow coughs to pull himself back together.

Once he’s breathing steadily, he turns to see that Enjolras is still gazing at him.

“So. What’s your story?” Enjolras asks.

“My story? Oh, fuck, you mean my non-cancer story? Who I am as a person? Hell. I pretty much am my cancer now. It’s become the thing that defines me.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“Well then I must disappoint you and tell you that I am decidedly average.”

“I don’t believe that either.”

“Seriously?”

“I don’t believe that anyone is average. I believe that everyone is extraordinary in their own way. Average is a social construct.”

“You must be so much fun in math class. ‘No, Miss Johnson, the mathematical rules of algebra that were first proved to be true in ancient Greece are an oppressive heteronormative construct and must be dismantled.’”

“The fact that you assume that teachers are female with Anglo last names is problematic.”

“You never quit, do you?”

Enjolras smirks, and _that_ is problematic.

He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small cardboard carton, flicks it open, and _what the hell is a seventeen-year-old with cancer doing with a pack of cigarettes?_

There’s one between his impossibly perfect lips before Grantaire has the breath to say anything.

“Wow. You must be even more clueless than I thought.”

“Why do you say that?” He asks, cigarette waggling between his lips.

“You have cancer and you smoke? No wonder you’re all ‘try to make a difference’—you’re covering for the fact that you have no sense of self-preservation. And you’re just dumb.”

Enjolras laughs, deep and throaty, his head falling back, golden curls catching the sunlight in a really unfairly attractive way.

“It’s a metaphor. You put the killing thing right between your lips, but you don’t give it the power to do the killing.”

Grantaire hasn’t laughed this hard in a long time, and it hurts. His bloated belly hurts, his lungs ache, his throat feels like it’s going to split open. He has to lean against the wall of the church, gasping, for support.

“That is the most pretentious fucking thing I’ve ever heard,” he manages to choke out. “Jesus, do you go around saying shit like that to everyone? How have you not yet been punched in the face?”

A shadow flashes across Enjolras’ face. “I’m trying to make a statement here. Find meaning in something awful.”

Grantaire inhales as deeply as he can and rolls his eyes. “Good luck with that.”

Enjolras makes a sort of snort noise and kicks at a pebble.

“Combeferre was my best friend.” The cigarette wags up and down as Enjolras talks through it. “He and Courf and I all met at the hospital, when we were all in there at the same time every week, and we just got to talking.” He pulls the cigarette from his lips and stuffs it back in the carton, all without looking at Grantaire. “Don’t get me wrong, Courf is one of the best people you will ever meet and he means the world to me, but with Ferre… it was different. We could have entire conversations without saying a word, you know?”

Grantaire is sorely tempted to throw out a smart response to that, but for once in his life thinks better of it.

“And I never told him how much he meant to me. I mean… _really_ meant to me. If you know what I mean. And when I lost him, I decided to let that be his final lesson to me. To let everyone know how much I appreciate them, how much they matter, even— _especially_ —if they feel like they don’t.”

Grantaire nods slowly. He’s heard a million different variations of this story. He wants to call bullshit, he really does, but Enjolras is just so fucking _sincere_.

“Why did you tell me all that?”

Enjolras shrugs. “You asked.”

“I asked who he was. I didn’t ask for… you know… whatever that was.”

“I can’t tell you who he was without telling you everything I know and remember about him.”

“And who will remember him when you aren’t around anymore? Whether that’s next year or sixty years from now? Eventually there will come a time when there’s no one left to remember you. So don’t get attached. It’s all meaningless and we’re all going to die anyway.”

“It is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all.”

“Jesus Christ. Where do you come up with these clichés?”

“My parents have a lot of throw pillows and little wall plaques with encouraging sayings on them. And there’s a reason that some sayings keep getting passed around.”

“Yeah, because people would rather cling to trite sayings than face the awful truth.”

“You’re real pleasant to be around, you know that?”

“Yeah, well, you’re a walking, talking cancer cliché. I bet you only have two songs on your iPod—‘Fix You’ by Coldplay and ‘The Remedy’ by Jason Mraz.”

Enjolras pouts, taking a few seconds to carefully formulate his reply. “That’s… not entirely true.”

“Not entirely?”

“Those may be the two at the top of the most-played list, but I do listen to other stuff, too.”

“Like what?”

“Maybe I don’t want to tell you.”

“You are a completely ridiculous human being.”

“But I made you laugh.”

Grantaire has to cede that point, biting back an involuntary smile. “Yeah, I guess you did.”

“See? One person can make a difference.”

Even in the shade of the church building and several tall maple trees along the driveway, the sun seems to be shining even brighter than it was when they emerged from the depths of the basement. But maybe that’s just Enjolras’ smile.

A minivan pulls up, and the passenger window rolls down.

“Shit.” Enjolras sighs. “That’s my mom. I gotta go. See you next time, okay?”

“Okay.”

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Cosmic Love" by Florence + The Machine.
> 
> The non-Ami names in the list at the end of the meeting are a few of the people close to me that cancer has taken.
> 
> I'm [here](http://www.missmarionmac.tumblr.com) on Tumblr -- come say hi!


End file.
